Look Closer (8 Photos)

Eight works with a hidden detail

Each of these eight works hides something that only shows up on a second look. In Debrecen, the sleeping face in a tree hollow is not painted on the bark at all. Some works are tiny; others are large, but the key detail is still small.

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🌳 The Trees Also Sleep — By Dinho Bento in Debrecen, Hungary 🇭🇺

A sleeping face fills the hollow of a tree in Debrecen’s Great Forest (Nagyerdő). Look closer and the portrait is not painted on the bark: Dinho Bento traced the opening onto paper, transferred the shape to a thin wooden board and painted it at home with water-based paint, he explained in an interview. The Brazilian artist, then living in Debrecen, installed his forest works in the Pallag area in early 2021, and regional news site HAON covered them that April.

💡 Forest Fact: Bento fixed the panels with a paste that leaves no residue on the tree. The setting is protected ground: in 1939, part of Debrecen’s Great Forest became the first area in Hungary to be declared protected, according to the Hungarian state nature conservation service. The Hortobágy National Park Directorate notes that protection was extended to the whole forest in 1992.

📷 Artwork and photo: Dinho Bento.

More: More Tree Installations by Dinho Bento

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🚄 A Train Without Tracks — By Blesea in Cherbourg-en-Cotentin, France 🇫🇷

There are no rails under this TGV, only a long concrete wall. Blesea painted the train’s nose, windows and bodywork along a free-expression wall near a tunnel in Octeville, close to the La Passerelle university restaurant, and revealed it on Instagram on November 17, 2021, Tendance Ouest reported. The person beside the carriage shows the scale.

💡 Nerd Fact: Cherbourg is Blesea’s hometown. Speaking to France Bleu, he laughed off the idea that the mural was a campaign for a TGV to the city: the location itself inspired a more realistic image, and trains and railways are a classic graffiti theme.

More: 14 Murals by Blesea

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💗 A Heart Between the Bricks — By David Zinn

Two mice peek out of separate gaps in the wall, and one lowers a small pink heart on a string toward the other. The regular brick pattern makes them easy to walk past. Zinn’s own caption sets the scene: “Sheldon puts his heart on a string every morning from 6:15 to 8:45.”

💡 Nerd Fact: Zinn has worked in and around Ann Arbor, Michigan, since 1987. His website notes that his chalk-and-charcoal street drawings are always improvised on location.

More: More Small Chalk Worlds by David Zinn

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👁️ The View Inside an Eye — By My Dog Sighs in Glasgow, Scotland 🇬🇧

The eye is the first thing you see on this blue wall. Look into the iris and a second picture appears: a city skyline, a crane and a small figure. My Dog Sighs uses the reflection to put one scene inside another.

💡 Nerd Fact: The reflected eye is a recurring format for the Portsmouth-based artist. On a hospital wall in Rome he painted 540 eyes, each reflecting someone who had been born or had died in that hospital, he told The News in Portsmouth. His career started with Free Art Friday: while working as a primary school teacher, he left a small artwork on a windowsill each Friday for a stranger to take home.

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💜 A Face Between the Shapes — By SCEL in Prešov, Slovakia 🇸🇰

At first the wall reads as an abstract composition of white edges, dark curves and orange honeycomb patterns. Then the purple eyes pull a face out of it. SCEL leaves just enough of the eyes, nose and mouth for the portrait to hold together, and shared the finished wall from Prešov on Instagram.

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🧩 Color Around the Cover — By Ememem

The utility cover stays exactly where it is, while small tiles fill the broken pavement around it in flowing bands of color. You could walk over it in a second, or stop and study it tile by tile.

💡 Nerd Fact: Ememem calls the practice flacking, from the French word flaque (puddle), and has been repairing damaged pavements this way since 2016, according to his website. In a 2021 interview published by Lyon’s 4th arrondissement, he estimated that he had made around 400 or 500, in cities from Lyon, Paris and Sète to Stavanger, Aberdeen and Barcelona.

More: Ememem’s Mosaic Repairs

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🎮 Piranha Plants in the Grass — By Pappas Pärlor in Sweden 🇸🇪

At first the red shapes could pass for spring flowers. Then the squared-off mouths and white teeth give them away. Pappas Pärlor plants video-game characters among real grass and crocuses, and the contrast between pixel stems and living plants is the joke. Behind the name is Johan Karlgren from Motala, who started making bead pictures with his daughter around 2014. In 2024–25, Östergötlands museum showed his work in the exhibition The Legend of Pappas Pärlor.

💡 Gamer Fact: The Piranha Plant debuted in World 1-2 of Super Mario Bros. (1985), rising out of green warp pipes, and is called Packun Flower in Japan, Wikipedia notes. In the original game it would not emerge while the player stood right next to its pipe. It has sold well for Pappas Pärlor too: in 2017 he told Göteborgs-Posten that a beaded one in a real flower pot was still his best seller.

More: More Retro Game Art by Pappas Pärlor

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🪨 Halved — By Jon Foreman at Lindsway Bay, Wales 🇬🇧

The circle starts with large, smooth stones at the front and shrinks row by row to tiny pebbles at the far edge. Jon Foreman made it at Lindsway Bay, a rural beach south of St Ishmaels in Pembrokeshire. He works with rocks he finds, or raked sand, and his designs on Welsh beaches are “destined to be washed away,” as CBS News put it.

More: The Art of Stones by Jon Foreman

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Which one is your favorite?